[4][5][6] Numerous companies (Airtel, Anritsu, Apple, Ericsson, Fly, Huawei, Jio, Keysight, LG, Nokia, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Vi, Xiaomi), research institutes (Technology Innovation Institute, the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre) and countries (United States, United Kingdom, European Union member states, Russia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel) have shown interest in 6G networks, and are expected to contribute to this effort.
[7][8][9][10][11][12][13] 6G networks will likely be faster than previous generations,[14] thanks to further improvements in radio interface modulation and coding techniques,[2] as well as physical-layer technologies.
[17][18][19][16][20] The NGMN alliance have cautioned that "6G must not inherently trigger a hardware refresh of 5G RAN infrastructure", and that it must "address demonstrable customer needs".
"[30] One of the challenges in supporting the required high transmission speeds will be the limitation of energy consumption and associated thermal protection in the electronic circuits.
"[32] In January 2022, Purple Mountain Laboratories of China claimed that its research team had achieved a world record of 206.25 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) data rate for the first time in a lab environment within the terahertz frequency band, which is supposed to be the base of 6G cellular technology.
The spinning potential of radio waves was first reported by British physicist John Henry Poynting in 1909, but making use of it proved to be difficult.
A major challenge is that the size of the spinning waves increases with distance, and the weakening signal makes high-speed data transmission difficult.
The Chinese team built a unique transmitter to generate a more focused vortex beam, making the waves spin in three different modes to carry more information, and developed a high-performance receiving device that could pick up and decode a huge amount of data in a split second.
[40] In February 2024, the U.S., Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden and the U.K. released a joint statement stating that they support a set of shared principles for 6G for "open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, resilient, and secure connectivity.